Dark Waters — Kristine Potter. Published by Aperture.
Kristine Potter’s Dark Waters moves through an ominous southern landscape, probing the connection
between violence to women at the hands of men and traditional songs known as “murder ballads.”
Following bodies of water with violent names, Potter has made sumptuous black-and-white
photographs of this unnerving landscape. Much like the eerie mixture of perverted love and murder
in the ballads, the book’s design creates a frisson of dread as it interweaves images, lyrics and
Rebecca Bengal’s original story.
Photographed in Potter’s studio against solid black, models are stand-ins for the murdered women.
Reiterating the solemnity throughout, the book’s sequences are separated by dark green sheets with
excerpted lyrics from the ballads printed on verso while textural strike-throughs challenge their violent
meaning.
What is without challenge, however, are the numerous artists who have recorded these songs
throughout the years with little to no commentary on the gendered horror stories they tell.
Cheryl Van Hooven is a photographer and writer based in New York and often working in the California Mojave Desert. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints & Photographs, Imagery Estate Winery Permanent Collection at Sonoma State University, among others. Her photographs and writing have been published in Interview magazine, Details magazine, Puchong Folios and Vogue Italia. She is currently working on a photo/text book.